This production of Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece seems to break the first rule of Brecht’s epic theatre, which requires emotional distance. It conjures Brecht’s upside down world, in which war denotes order and profit, while underlining all the losses that Mother Courage faces in spite of her relentless entrepreneurialism and attempts at profiteering – selling anything from burgers to ammunition and sex. But it is human, moving and funny. The distance closes and the production becomes devastating in its most savage moments, when Mother Courage loses her children, one by one.
Translator Anna Jordan justifies these moments by interpreting Brecht’s rule of verfremdungseffekt as making the drama “strange” rather than distanced. And in director Elle While’s powerful production, the emotional drama is tightly controlled, flaring up momentarily. In between flare ups, the narrator (Max Runham) pulls us away from the intimacies of this family to draw the bigger picture, summarising the gyrations of war and Courage’s travails over the years.
